By Sandra Tanner
In 1830 six men met to organize the Church of Christ, later renamed The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (see Doctrine and Covenants 115:3-5). At the end of 2003 the LDS Church claimed 11,985,254 members with 56,237 missionaries.
The LDS Church operates 116 temples throughout the world. Even though there are less than 200,000 Mormons in all of Africa, the Mormons have just dedicated their second temple on the continent. They have one in South Africa and a new one in Ghana. Another is under construction in Nigeria.
Below is a breakdown of the LDS membership as of December 31, 2002, by areas, from the official LDS website, http://www.lds.org.
Membership Distribution (31 December 2002)
United States
Canada
Mexico
Caribbean
South America
Central America
South Pacific
Europe
Asia
Africa
5,410,544
163,666
952,947
129,776
2,738,037
503,857
381,458
426,944
825,997
188,322
At the April 2004 general conference of the LDS Church it was announced that there had been 242,923 convert baptisms in 2003. Significantly, this is the lowest number in the past eight years. The number of converts has been dropping since 1996 and the current number of missionaries has fallen to the level of 1997. The average number of converts per missionary in 1996 was 6.7. In 2003 the average had dropped to 4.3.
While the LDS Church publishes the number of converts to the church they refuse to publish the number of people requesting their membership to be terminated or give the percent of active members.
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
Members
9,694,549
10,070,524
10,354,241
10,752,986
11,068,861
11,394,522
11,721,548
11,985,254
Converts
321,385
317,798
299,134
306,171
273,973
292,612
283,138
242,923
Missionaries
52,938
56,531
57,853
58,593
60,784
60,850
61,638
56,237
Originally appeared in:
Sandra Tanner, “Facts on the Mormon Church,” Salt Lake City Messenger, no. 102, May 2004, 8.